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Ack Baraly Kylee Tamera 202 EXTRINSIC AND INTRINSIC FACTORS INFLUENCING THE POSITIVE MEMORY BIAS IN AGING KYLEE TAMERA ACK BARALY A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctorate in Philosophy degree in Experimental Psychology at the University of Ottawa; Doctorate in Philosophy degree in Cognitive Sciences, Cognitive Psychology and Neurocognition at the Communauté Université Grenoble Alpes. School of Psychology Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition Faculty of Social Sciences École Doctorale Ingénierie pour la Santé, la Cognition et l’Environnement University of Ottawa Communauté Université Grenoble Alpes ©Kylee Tamera Ack Baraly, Ottawa, Canada, 2020 K. T. ACK BARALY PH.D. DISSERTATION ii Acknowledgements To Patrick and Pascal, thank you for being two of the most incredibly supportive and knowledgeable supervisors. You helped enlighten my scientific mind, pushing me to question better, reflect deeper, and learn more. You are both inspiring as researchers and as mentors. And I am forever grateful to have gone through this journey with you. I would also like to thank all of the members of the Neuropsychology Lab (Ottawa) and Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition (Chambéry and Grenoble). Thank you to all of the Master's students, honours thesis students, UROP students, lab volunteers, and research assistants who helped in more ways than I can count. Your enthusiasm and dedication to this work are truly appreciated. I am thankful for all the additional support provided by the INSPIRE Lab (Ottawa), which made collecting reliable data more efficient. A very special thank you to all of the research participants who so generously gave their time to this work. You are the pillar of scientific research and without you, none of this would have been possible. I am eternally grateful for all of my friends in Canada and in France. Thank you for being my emotional support, for providing me with many homes abroad, and for keeping my mind active and my spirit happy. And thank you to all of my colleagues who made the days worth it. And to my family, near and far, I simply cannot express enough gratitude for all you have done. I thank you for your unconditional love and support, and for teaching me all the invaluable lessons that I could not have learned from books. K. T. ACK BARALY PH.D. DISSERTATION iii Abstract Emotional experiences are more likely to be remembered than more neutral, mundane ones. In young adults, negative information may be particularly memorable. Yet, an interesting change seems to happen in aging: As adults grow older, they may start remembering positive information more often than negative information. This positive memory bias in aging is commonly observed and is often explained in terms of changing time perspectives and motivation across the lifespan (i.e., Socioemotional Selectivity Theory; Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999). However, few studies have considered the basic interactions between memory and emotion that could influence this positivity bias. In this thesis, I examine whether certain factors partially independent of aging (i.e., semantic relatedness and distinctiveness, Study 1; mood, Studies 2-4), might influence the presence and magnitude of the positivity bias in memory. In Study 1, I explore the cognitive mechanisms required to produce the positivity bias and apply what is learned in this paper to investigate, in Studies 2-4, whether differences in mood could explain why the positivity bias occurs. In all studies, memory is measured using immediate free recall of positive, negative, and neutral pictures. In Study 1, I manipulate item interrelatedness (i.e., the extent of relatedness among pictures of a same category) and relative distinctiveness (i.e., the processing of a picture category at the same time as or in isolation from the others) to show that older adults’ emotional memory can be entirely explained by these two factors. The distinctive processing of positive pictures relative to other pictures is necessary for producing a positivity bias in older adults, which completely disappears when the distinctive processing of positive pictures is removed. Therefore, in subsequent studies I encourage the distinctive processing of items to increase the likelihood of observing a positivity bias and its possible interaction with mood. In Study 2, I test whether differences in mood predict differences K. T. ACK BARALY PH.D. DISSERTATION iv in emotional memory bias in young and older adults using a video mood induction technique validated in a separate pilot study. In Studies 3 and 4, I further test the effect of mood on the positivity bias beyond any age-specific factors, by examining young adults only. This serves to reduce the likelihood of confounds that might exist between age groups (i.e., related to neurocognitive changes or decline), in order to study the true effects of mood on the positivity bias. In Study 3, I use a written priming task to experimentally manipulate mood and time perspective in young adults. In Study 4, I compare differences in naturally occurring moods and emotional memory in two separate young adult samples: university students and non-students. The experimental mood manipulations have minimal influence on the presence of a negativity bias in young adults (Studies 2 and 3), and influence to a small extent the memory advantage of positive over neutral material in older adults (Study 2). Non-student young adults show a similar preferential memory for positive material that is different from what is observed in university students, but this is not easily attributed to differences in mood (Study 4). In light of these results, I argue that the positivity effect in aging memory reflects a temporary contextual advantage for positive information that is not permanent or irreversible. Rather, it seems to depend in varying degrees on the context of study (i.e., relatedness and distinctiveness), mood, and the young-adult reference group. This has implications for how future research defines and studies the positivity effect in aging. K. T. ACK BARALY PH.D. DISSERTATION v Table of Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... ii Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... viii List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ ix List of Appendices .......................................................................................................................... x Contribution of Author .................................................................................................................. xi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................... 1 Positivity Effect in Aging ...................................................................................................... 2 Definitions ............................................................................................................... 2 Main Findings ......................................................................................................... 5 Theoretical Explanations ......................................................................................... 7 Limitations in the Literature.................................................................................... 8 Emotion-Enhanced Memory (Extrinsic Factors) .................................................................. 9 Arousal-Modulated Consolidation ........................................................................ 10 Cognitive Factors Influencing Encoding and Retrieval ........................................ 11 Mood-Congruent Memory (Intrinsic Factor) ...................................................................... 17 Conditions for Mood Congruence ......................................................................... 18 Theoretical Explanation ........................................................................................ 19 How Could Mood Congruence Explain the Positivity Effect? ............................. 21 Studying Mood in the Laboratory ......................................................................... 24 Thesis Studies ...................................................................................................................... 25 Experimental Manipulations ................................................................................. 26 Memory Task ........................................................................................................ 27 CHAPTER 2. RESEARCH ARTICLES ...................................................................................... 29 Study 1. Semantic Relatedness and Distinctive Processing May Inflate Older Adults’ Positive Memory Bias ............................................................................................................ 30 Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 31 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 32 Experiment 1 ......................................................................................................................
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